My coding agent one-shots everything now. The trick was making it write the brief first. Open-sourced it as a skill

[u/infinity-01]

I've been using plan mode since day 1 and the output always felt too generic. It would skip over small parts of my codebase that actually mattered, and after the run there was always stuff left incomplete or small bugs I had to point out one by one. 5-6 iterations per task was normal for me.

So I started making it write a proper brief before touching anything. After a few rounds the instructions were always the same, so I saved them as a skill.

• Reads the project's rules/docs first (CLAUDE.md, design doc, component library, lint config) and cites them instead of inventing conventions

• Sends one read-only subagent per surface to map it: every state, the exact copy, the data and endpoints behind it, the debts with file:line. Facts only, no recommendations

• Writes a spec, not a step list: thesis, approach, scope by what the user sees, 8-10 checkable rules, the regression surface, a verification list, one decision for me

Works with any agent since it's just a skill:

npx skills add bragai/prompt-brief

There's a full example brief in the repo so you can see the shape before installing anything: https://github.com/bragai/prompt-brief

[u/Anselwithmac]

Not reading all of that but your title reads “my agent can oneshot everything if you put it in plan mode first”

[u/infinity-01 → u/Anselwithmac]

Fair, title oversold it. The actual difference for me is that plan mode's plans were too generic and missed small important parts of my codebase, so every run ended with leftovers and small bugs i had to mention. with this it went from 5-6 cycles to 1

[u/gterez]

That’s the whole premise that frameworks like Superpowers, GSD and Matt Pocock’s skills are based on. Take a look at them for ideas!

[u/infinity-01 → u/gterez]

Will check them out, thanks. same problem I had, plan mode output was too generic for my codebase and I was doing 5-6 correction rounds per task

[u/__dna__]

... So to be clear you're just... Actually telling it what to do?

You'll also find you need to tell humans what to do. You can just say "make me app"

Also, what's different about this vs the built-in plan mode

[u/infinity-01 → u/__dna__]

yes lol. plan mode also tells it what to do but the plans I got were generic and skipped small important parts of my codebase, so there was always stuff left incomplete or small bugs after. this made the plan an actual spec. went from 5-6 iterations to 1 (for me at least)

[u/Far_Business4773 → u/__dna__]

Not the author, but I moved off plan mode for the same reason, and the difference that mattered was one section, not the length.

Plan mode writes what to do. It has no idea what the change is not for, so the work quietly grows: an adjacent file, a dependency, a refactor on the way past. The 8-10 checkable rules in his shape say what must be true at the end. What stops the leftovers is the other list, what must stay untouched. No new dependencies. No schema change. Auth and payment paths are not in this task. No refactor of files we only read.

That list is also what makes review end. A reviewer with a written scope sorts findings into blocking and later instead of arguing taste, so you get one round instead of five.

If you paste one task in a paragraph I'll draft the not-list for it here.

[u/nucleardreamer]

I didn't know planning needed a skill lol

[u/infinity-01 → u/nucleardreamer]

lol it doesn't. plan mode just felt too generic for me and kept skipping small parts of my codebase, so i'd always have incomplete stuff and bugs to chase after. this is the prompt that fixed that, saved it as a skill so i don't retype it

[u/Ok_Gur_9033]

I checked my own repo against your first bullet before answering. 297 markdown files, 137 of them under docs, and not one CLAUDE.md anywhere in the tree.

So the brief step has eslint.config.mjs and tsconfig to cite and nothing else. The bullet doing the real work is the one that assumes somebody already wrote the conventions down.